Those particular
ramps were put there to hook up with the proposed Rose City Freeway, not
the more notorious Mount Hood. But both were part of a grand plan in
which freeways, freeways and more freeways would be the city’s first,
last and only transit solution.

This vision
originated with trucked-in New York überplanner Robert Moses. His 1943
“Portland Improvement” plan would have effectively carved the city into a
series of superhighway-delineated enclaves.

As
you read this on the MAX, a fixie on your hip, you may notice that
Portland did not, in fact, turn into the slightly soggier version of
L.A. envisioned by Moses and his freeway-loving cohort.

That fact is due to
the Great Freeway Revolt of the early 1970s. In what is arguably modern
Portland’s defining moment, residents turned against the
neighborhood-smashing Mount Hood Freeway and set their Birkenstocks on
the wonky, green path we’ve trod ever since.

Meanwhile,
Mayor Neil Goldschmidt wheedled the feds into letting us keep the $500M
already allocated for the freeways, so we could build the transit mall
and the first MAX line.

Then, of course, in
1975 Gov. Bob Straub hiked up the slopes of Mount Doom and hurled Robert
Moses into its fiery depths, and we all lived happily ever after.
Except Neil Goldschmidt.